Vancouver Island reported no new cases of COVID-19 for a third day in a row.
British Columbia reported 148 news cases across the province and two additional deaths. There are now 1,371 active cases province-wide. Currently 61 people are hospitalized with two in ICU or critical care.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, said there are currently 3,417 people under public health monitoring and 6,917 people have recovered from the virus. There have been about 30 exposure events in schools since opening.
“This is to be expected — we have had no outbreaks in our school system yet, but we are monitoring and health authorities and public health is there for every single school and we will continue to be there as we move through this pandemic,” said Henry.
Vancouver Island has seen no exposure events in schools so far, according to Henry. Even with the low cases on the island, she encourages people not become complacent.
“It is a large island and I think I need to remind people that this virus travels with us and we move. And when we move, we bring that risk with us,” she said. “We know that if we are complacent and we let our guard down that this virus will find a way to spread and it will spread to people that we care most about.”
B.C. reported one new outbreak at Banfield Pavilion, a long-term care facility in Vancouver. The outbreak at OPAL by Element, an assisted living facility in the Fraser Health region has been declared over. There are now 14 active outbreaks in the healthcare system — nine of them are in long-term care and assisted living and five are in acute care units.
“We have no new community outbreaks, but we do continue to have exposure events, as we know, around the province and these are reported on each of the health authorities’ websites and on the BCCDC website,” said Henry.
She said it is time to refocus in the fall and get back to basics to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“For the most part in B.C., we have managed to flatten our curves and keep them in a manageable place. Obviously, I would prefer if we had far fewer people being infected because we know every time somebody transmits it to somebody else, there is a risk that it’s going to be somebody who gets very sick or dies from this.”
